The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."
-Maimonides
^My house, painted as it has been for the last thirty-six years, until this afternoon.
We could put it off no longer. This summer, we really needed to get our house painted. After quite an intensive man hunt, which involved more twists and turns than I care to recall, we finally landed on our house painter.
Juan. His name is Juan and thanks to the work we've done together on some other projects, I have decided to trust him with the enormous climbing pink roses that make all my lifetime gardening dreams come true, and will have to be delicately pulled away from the sides of my house in order to paint.
That, my friends, is a huge amount of trust.
So a couple weeks ago, when we accepted Juan's bid, I breathed a sigh of relief. All the hard decisions are made, and there's nothing left for me to do but watch these gentlemen paint, right?
Wrong. Very wrong.
Because that's when Saul - Juan's bestie and his lead paint guy - casually tossed this off to me: "Just let me know what paint colors you want to use."
^ Pristine white snow shows off the rosy undertones of our original house color.
Okay well I still didn't panic because our house has been painted the exact same color since it was born back in 1986. True, we've repainted it several times over the years, with the sweat from our very own brows, but other than sprucing up the color of the front door, we have kept the original base and trim colors, thank you very much, and feel no need to change them now.
But then, I remembered about the windows.
* * * * *
Five years back, when we started replacing our windows, our window salesman asked us to pick out the exterior color of our new budget breakers. Our choices were:
white
off-white
and a bunch of dark colors that I immediately ruled out.
In a snap, I went with off white.
"Are you sure?" asked Dave. "Most people go with white."
^ This photo sums up all my problems in one quick glance. The window on the left is trimmed out in the new off-white vinyl. It clashes rather aggressively with the old base color of the house, and the old trim color around the front door area.
"No," I reasoned, "the off-white color is kinda ugly but it is closer to the current trim color on the house, so that's the best color for now. And then when we repaint the house, we'll just paint the window trim whatever color we want."
Right?
Wrong, piped up my husband.
He quite determinedly told me that this vinyl would dictate the color of my window trim for the rest of my life. We weren't ever going to paint it.
"No," I assured him, "people repaint window trim all the time. It's not a big deal."
He still disagreed with me.
Cleverly, Dave stayed out of this debate. He sat quietly, licking his chops no doubt over the commission he would earn on our contract.
And I - I now recall this moment with heartbreaking clarity - decided to PRETEND to agree with my husband's no-paint edict. We'll just sort that out when we get to the painting stage, I thought to myself, and I'm sure any professional painter will agree with me.
* * * * *
Fast forward to last weekend. Recalling this conversation with a lump in my throat, I reached out to Saul to confirm that painting our off-white vinyl window trim would no biggie whatsoever.
And you'll never guess what he said.
"Ummm," he deliberated, inspecting the innards of my window where all the immaculately clean off-white vinyl surfaces surround the many delicate mechanisms that make my windows so satisfyingly worth the outrageous amounts of money we spent on them. "I don't think you really want to do that. I'd leave them unpainted if I were you."
In that moment, I suddenly faced the fact that my house was most definitely going to be changing colors, and the new colors would be driven by the sickly color of my new window trim.
The off-white vinyl chickens had finally come home to roost.
* * * * *
Now to be fair, the off-white trim is not the worst thing in the world. It's just that:
A) It most definitely does not work with our current house colors.
B) It has strong yellowy undertones whereas our current colors - to which my eyes are very accustomed - lean toward rosy pink undertones.
C) I'm highly sensitive to those weird little differences in colors.
D) I don't want to go through the enormous hassle of picking out new house colors!
All of the above are true.
* * * * *
^ Sunday afternoon, I ran over to the paint store and gathered up at least 25 paint chips. An hour later, we were down to three.
Thirty-six hours have passed since my fateful chat with Saul. I've been through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and as of this evening, acceptance.
I've worked the chip counter at the local Sherwin Williams hard, purchased three sample pots of our top three contenders, painted sections of each color on four different areas of the house, polled the family, and come to a unanimous decision:
Natural Linen for the areas that need to match the vinyl window trim.
Downy for the main house.
Yes, they are a little more to the yellow end of the spectrum than I might have otherwise chosen. But now that I see by comparison how rosy pink my house has been for the past thirty-six years, I'd say it's time for a change.
* * * * *
But phew! The paint colors are finally chosen and now I can rest my decision fatigued brain and watch the painting begin, right?
Wrong. Very wrong.
Because now, Saul reminds me, I still need to pick a new paint color for the front door.
^ Spoilers. I think it will still be green.
* * * * *
Our humble home is in need of a face lift. Come follow along as we have her painted.
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